Lithuania has registered 3,159 new coronavirus infections and another 30 deaths from Covid-19 over the past 24 hours, the country's statistics office said on Thursday morning.
Meanwhile, 1,669 people have been confirmed to have recovered from the infection over the past 24 hours.
A total of 103,028 people have tested positive for the coronavirus in Lithuania since the start of the pandemic. The country currently has 56,518 active cases and 45,113 recoveries.
The coronavirus death toll has reached 933, and 464 infected people have died of other causes.
Lithuania tested 11,862 people over the past 24 hours.
Not enough testing
Lithuania is testing too few people to know the true scope of the pandemic, Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė said on Thursday, adding that the real number of infected people could be much higher.
“The risk is so great now and the numbers are so frightening – it seems likely that we have tens of thousands of infected people,” she told the Žinių Radijas radio station.
This is evidenced by the high proportion of positive test results, according to the prime minister.
“Given the scope of testing we have now, and the fact that up to 20 percent of the test results are positive, we can state that testing no longer shows anything about the real situation,” Šimonytė said.
“We just don't know how many people are ill,” she added.
Unless people follow lockdown rules, a new wave of infections can hit the country in January, she said.
“If the majority of people follow the lockdown restrictions, we could expect [the daily count to decline to] 500–700 new cases in late January, which would be a great relief for our health system,” according to Šimonytė.
“If people look for ways how to bypass these restrictions during Christmas – and, obviously, we can't put a policeman in every home – this means that we'll have another significant wave in January, which will put a lot of strain on the health system,” she said.
Lithuania is currently one of the most coronavirus-affected countries in Europe and worldwide.
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